The present invention relates to a butterfly valve.
In the food industry, the cleanness of the pipes through which liquid food (milk, creams, etc.) flows is of great importance.
Deposits of impurities gradually build up along the pipes, in particular at the valves. It is therefore necessary to clean the pipes correctly in order to prevent bacteria from appearing, such cleaning being achieved without disassembling the pipes, by causing a cleaning liquid to flow through them, which cleaning liquid must not be too aggressive, as is bleach, so as to avoid damaging the gaskets and the stainless steel walls.
It is known that butterfly valves are valves of simple and inexpensive design. Unfortunately, they suffer from the drawback of being difficult to clean, especially where the disk is connected to the cylinder of the valve, in the vicinity of its pivot axis.
Because of that drawback, and in order to ensure that the operations for cleaning butterfly valves in place are effective, the time for which the cleaning fluid is caused to flow must be increased considerably, and certain users even prefer not to use such valves and to replace them with flap valves.
The problem to be solved is how to make a device that makes it possible to increase the effectiveness and the quality of cleaning of the butterfly valves in place, such cleaning being achieved by causing fluid to flow, so as firstly to comply with safety and hygiene standards, and secondly to reduce the time required by the cleaning operations and therefore their cost.